ENDLESS DESCENT
79 minutes? Doesn't sound endless to me.
This movie's been recommended - numerous times - by our illustrious Terry Luster, and support that enthusiastic was enough to convince me to disregard my previous experiences with director Juan Piquer Simon (the dreadful Pieces and the impossibly stupid Cthulhu Mansion). I'd always wanted to give it a look anyway, if mostly for the cool cover art. (who was it who complained about the bad box art on this one? What's wrong with you?)
Stars Jack Scalia and this huge, 80's-style wind-blown hairdo as a guy who designs submarines. He's called into duty when the Siren I, a sub he designed, disappears in this big oceanic trench, and he joins a Navy captain, your standard submarine working-class-hero crew, and of course his ex-wife. (who wants to neither reconcile their relationship, nor deliver dialogue better than "...you can file everything else under 'M' for 'memory'.")
So they zip on down to the bottom of this trench and find about the second-last thing you'd expect to find there - plant life. (the LAST thing you'd expect to find is a circus) We're told helpfully by a marine biologist that at that depth, photosynthesis cannot occur, and thus plant life is pretty much impossible. And then they find this big cave, where the secret of Siren I is lying in wait...
This movie features considerably more than its share of the complete, jaw-dropping stupidity that we've come to expect from Simon. Yes, there is a "Captain, you have to reverse the polarity on..." scene. The footage we are shown on a monitor or this plant life is obviously stock footage of seaweed taken at a depth of about fifteen or twenty feet ' streaks of sunlight can very clearly be seen shining through the very close surface. The central plot rests on a pretty silly notion ' that the U.S. Navy would send a total of two people and a LOT of guns on a mission like that, so that these civilians can be drafted and sent out on a dangerous mission in which gunplay is likely. The sub is taken into a lengthy, tunnel-like cave in which it has no room to turn around, which smells suspiciously of bullshit, especially considering an earlier scene which establishes that this boat can't even detect two massive icebergs until they're within spitting distance.
Performances are a disappointment overall - not like this is a bunch of people I expected a whole lot from, but when you've got R. Lee Ermey as a Navy captain, you want him to swallow the screen whole. Most everybody else looks like they'd rather be elsewhere, and the one really foxy chick (Ely Pouget, who I don't remember at all from Death Machine) dies too early on. And there's one of those "jive-talkin' black guys" who of course dies as soon as he can be disposed of.
Nevertheless, there was quite a bit I liked in this film, and it won me over overall. The effects are considerably better than we might expect - in fact, I've seen much faker-looking submarine shots in much more high-profile, big-budget movies (cough cough Under Siege cough cough). The creature effects are really good (and occasionally quite imaginative), and there's a whole lotta ick. Despite the movie's shameless lapse into Aliens-territory about halfway through (until then, it was shamelessly aping The Abyss), it generated a number of suspenseful and exciting moments and situations. And yes, when one character makes a big sacrifice near the end, I was touched.
I'm not sure I'd recommend this one - for this kind of thing, it ranks above Sphere and below Deep Star Six...in other words, right around Leviathan. But it is entertaining, and more well-made than we might expect. And when the monsters are shot, they all explode, so that's pretty cool. But damn, that's some big hair on Scalia.
Also known as The Rift and La Grieta (which I presume is Spanish for The Rift).